The rise and fall of the British nation: a twentieth-century history

It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, from building a welfare state to coping with decline.

Nobody would dream of writing the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union in this way.

David Edgerton's major account of modern British history breaks out of the confines of traditionalism to reveal an unfamiliar nation and a country subject to huge disruptions.